that you would rise through the ranks of all the boys and be sent to the
Daikvo and become a poet. It isn't like that for me. I don't want to be
a poet. Did you understand that?"
Maati took a pose that expressed both an acceptance of correction and a
query. Vanjit responded with one appropriate to thanking someone of
higher status.
"I had the dream again," Vanjit said. "I've been having it every night,
almost. He's in me. And he's shifting and moving and I can hear his
heart beating."
"I'm sorry," Maati said.
"No, Maati-kvo, that's just it. I wake up, and I'm not sad any longer.
It was only hard when I thought it would never come. Now, I wake up, and
I'm happy all day long. I can feel him getting close. He'll be here.
What is being a poet beside that?"
Nayiit, he thought.
Maati didn't expect the tears, they simply welled up in his eyes. The
pain in his breast was so sudden and sharp, he almost mistook the sorrow
for illness. She put her hand on his, her expression anxious. He forced
himself to smile.
"You're quite right," he said. "Quite right. Come along now. The bowls
are all washed, and it's time we got to work."
He made his way to the hall they had set aside for classes. His heart
was both heavy and light: heavy with the renewed sorrow of his boy's
death, light at Vanjit's reaction to him. She had known Eiah's work to
be of greater importance, and had already made her peace with her own
lesser role. He wondered whether, in her place and at her age, he would
have been able to do the same. He doubted it.
That evening, his lecture was particularly short, and the conversation
after it was lively and pointed and thoughtful. In the days that
followed, Maati abandoned his formal teaching entirely, instead leading
discussion after discussion, analysis after analysis. Together, they
tore Vanjit's binding of Clarity-of-Sight apart, and together they
rebuilt it. Each time, Maati thought it was stronger, the images and
resonances of it more appropriate to one another, the grammar that
formed it more precise.
It was difficult to call the process to a halt, but in the end, it was
Vanjit and Vanjit alone who would make the attempt. They might help her
and advise her, but he allocated two full weeks in which the binding was
hers and hers alone.
Low clouds came in the morning Eiah returned. They scudded in from the
north on a wind cold as winter. Maati knew it wouldn't take. There were
weeks of heat and sun to come before the seasons changed. And yet, there
was a part of Maati's mind that couldn't help seeing the shift as an
omen. And a positive one, he told himself. Change, the movement of the
seasons, the proper order of the world: those were what he tried to see
in the low, gray roof of the sky. Not the presentiment of barren winter.
"The news is strange," Eiah said as they unloaded her cart. Boxes of
salt pork and raw flour, canisters of spice and hard cheese. "The Galts
have fallen on Saraykeht like they owned it, but something didn't go
well. I can't tell if my brother thought the girl was too ugly or she
fell into a fit when she was presented, but something went badly. What I
heard was early and muddled. I'll know better next time I go."
"Anything that hurts him helps us," Maati said. "So whatever it was,
it's good."
"That was my thought," Eiah said, but her voice was somber. When he took
a pose of query, she didn't answer it.
"How have things progressed here?" she asked instead.
"Well. Very well. I think Vanjit is ready."
Eiah stopped, wiping her sleeve across her forehead. She looked old. How
many summers had she seen? Thirty? Thirty-one? Her eyes were deeper than
thirty summers.
"When?" she asked.
"We were only waiting for you to come back," he said. Then, trying for
levity, "You've brought the wine and food for a celebration. So
tomorrow, we'll do something worth celebrating."
Or else something to mourn, he thought but did not say.
9
"By everything holy, don't tell Balasar," Sinja said. "He can't know
about this."
"Why?" Idaan asked, sitting on the edge of the soldier's bed. "What
would he do?"
"I don't know," Sinja said. "Something bloody and extreme. And effective."
"Stop," Otah said. "Just stop. I have to think."
But sitting there, head resting in his hands, clarity of mind wasn't
coming to him easily. Idaan's story-her travels in the north after her
exile, Cehmai's appearance on her doorstep, their rekindled love, and
Maati's break with his fellow poet and then his return-had the feel of
an old poem, if not the careful structure. If he hadn't had the pirates
or Ana or her father or his own son or the conspiracy between Yalakeht
and Obar State, or the incursions from the Westlands, he might have
enjoyed the tale for its own sake.
But she hadn't brought it to him as a story. It was a threat.
"What role has Cehmai taken in this?" he asked.
"None. He wanted nothing to do with it. Or with my coming here, for
that. I've left him to look after things until I've paid my debt to you.
Then I'll be going home."
"Is it working?" Otah said at length. "Idaan-cha, did Maati say anything
to suggest it was working?"
His sister took a pose of negation that held a sense of uncertainty.
"He came to Cehmai for help," Sinja said. "That means at least that he
thinks he needs help."
"And Cehmai didn't agree to it," Idaan said. "He isn't helping. But he
also doesn't want to see Maati hung. He cut Maati off before he told me
who was backing him."
"What makes you think he has backing?"
"He said as much. Strong backing and an ear in the palaces whenever he
wanted one," Idaan said. "Even if that overstates the truth, he isn't
out hunting rabbits or wading through a rice field. Someone's feeding
him. And how many people are there who might want the andat back in the
world?"
"No end of them," Otah said. "But how many would think the thing was
possible?"
Sinja opened a small wooden cabinet and took out a fluted bottle of
carved bone. When he lifted out the stopper, the scent of wine filled
the room. He asked with a gesture. Otah and Idaan accepted
simultaneously, and with the same pose.
"The books are all burned," Otah said. "The histories are gone, the
grammars are gone. I didn't think he could do this when he wrote to me
before, I don't see that he could manage it now."
Sinja, stunned, overfilled one of the wine bowls, the red pooling on his
table like spilled blood. Idaan hoisted a single eyebrow.
"He wrote to you before?" she said.